No small sighting

COEUR d'ALENE - When the small bird flashed by Steve Record as he stood in his yard on a Tuesday afternoon, he turned, followed its flight and watched it land on the fence.

He wasn't sure what kind of bird it was, but he knew this: He had never seen one like this before near his 18th Street home.

It was light brown, with white and yellow eyes, standing perhaps 5 inches tall.

"You could see the little hooked beak," he said.

The bird flew to a tree branch, settled down and began to stare around on a sunny, blue-skied day. Record, meanwhile, rushed inside, turned to his computer and searched the Internet to find an identification.

He found it: pygmy owl.

For proof, the amateur photographer grabbed his camera, hurried back outside and snapped some pictures. For the next 15 minutes or so, the owl posed perfectly still, occasionally turning its head from side to side.

"I didn't think anybody would believe me," he said.

Michael Lucid does.

The regional wildlife biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game said pygmy owls are a fairly common, year-round, resident owl in this area.

"Like most predators they occur at fairly low densities, but they are not considered to be at risk or particularly rare," he wrote.

Pygmy owls are ranked an S4 species for Idaho, with S1 being the most at risk and S5 being the least at risk. They are a somewhat "outside of the box" owl as they tend to be more active during the day than at night, Lucid wrote.

Shirley Sturts with the National Audubon Coeur d'Alene Chapter said pygmy owls are fairly common, but not often seen.

"They are here all year, but in summer they are found in thick fir and spruce woods at higher elevations and are seldom observed," she wrote.

In late fall and winter, they often show up in the open valleys, Sturts wrote. They can frequently be seen perched on the top of a telephone pole or on a fence post at the edge of a field, at dawn and dusk.

"One Christmas Bird Count, we found one in a small tree next to a gas station at dusk," she wrote. "No one saw it but us and a lot of people were coming and going."

Pygmy owls primarily feed on small rodents and large insects but they will take small birds as well.

"We saw one take a robin at a feeder once," Sturts wrote.

They are unique birds, she wrote, because of their small size, and the spots on the back of its head that make it look like it has eyes on the back of its head as well as the front.

It is not known how many live in North Idaho.

"One would have to do an extensive survey to come up with a number," Sturts wrote.

Record, for his part, knows this about the pygmy owl.

"It's a gorgeous bird," he said.